Classical Music’s #MeToo Stories Are Just A First Step

This week Washington Post arts journalists Anne Midgette and Peggy McGlone published results of their six-month investigation of sexual harassment in the classical music business. Some of the stories they put on the record were new; others have been open secrets for years.

One of the latter stories – about Cleveland Orchestra concertmaster William Preucil is not new at all. Back in 2007, the Cleveland Scene published an article questioning Preucil’s behavior and reporting an incident with a female student at the Cleveland Institute of Music in which the student claimed Preucil had harassed her. The school, said the article, had investigated, and responded by transferring the student to another teacher and paying for her to audition at another school. The Cleveland Orchestra did nothing, at least publicly.

After this week’s story, the Cleveland Orchestra quickly suspended Preucil and the Cleveland Institute of Music circulated an internal memo saying that Preucil had resigned. There will doubtless be other announcements from other institutions announcing suspensions and investigations.

There has been a flood of #MeToo revelations in the ten months since The New York Times’ Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey published their explosive story about Harvey Weinstein. Several prominent artists have had to step down from their positions of power, including James Levine, Charles Dutoit and Peter Martins. In classical music insider circles, there has been little surprise – the words “open secret” greeting most revelations. That seems to be the case with Preucil.

Two observations:

Why did the dam of #MeToo stories break with the Weinstein story? It certainly didn’t after the Bill Cosby revelations or other prominent stories over the years. The Cleveland Scene story, for example, didn’t spark a Preucil suspension. Journalists had been trying to get the Weinstein story for years. I know several journalists who had repeatedly attempted to nail down the Levine story but never could pre-Weinstein. I wonder if in the Trump era, where documented misbehaviors of the president have had seemingly no consequences, frustrations have emboldened victims to step up and for more people to not just take notice but treat their stories seriously. It’s happened with gun violence too. Columbine and Sandy Hook didn’t get the traction that Parkland has. Sexual harassment and gun violence seem less tolerable when the harasser-in-chief gets away with bad behavior. People seem more motivated to stand up for things they believe in.

Fine to flush predators out of the system. But what about the institutions and the people who run them who looked the other way? Where are the consequences for them? Levine’s behavior at the Met was known for years. It’s outrageous for Met officials to say they didn’t know. The predators are frankly less to blame than the institutions that looked the other way because the bad guys had talent. If there was zero tolerance (something like how we treat embezzlement) there would be less bad behavior. So the Cleveland Orchestra suspended Preucil after the story broke, but why did it take public exposure before it was investigated by the orchestra? The fact that this seemingly went on for years is a Cleveland Orchestra failure as much as it is Preucil’s. Until there are consequences for the institutions and the people who look the other way, things won’t change. These institutions have to have clearly defined policies and procedures for dealing with accusations. No, people shouldn’t be convicted based merely on accusations, but because these institutions clearly aren’t invested in curbing bad behavior, the lines are blurry about how to investigate, let alone deal with it.

One last personal note:

When I was an arts reporter at a large metro paper, I discovered that one of the big arts institutions in town had settled with an artist who had come forward with a story of sexual misconduct against the artistic director. The company had subsequently encouraged her to retire and bought her a house to compensate. I dug around a bit and pitched the story to editors who quickly killed it. They didn’t want the controversy. He stayed on for several years more, retiring with full honors. Even though the behavior was an “open secret” it was never confronted publicly and there were no public consequences for the enabling institution beyond payoffs to victims. How many careers were ruined or cut short because of it?

It has always bothered me that I didn’t push harder, but in truth it was an icky sordid story, and I was acutely aware that exposing this person in the newspaper would end his career and damage his organization. While I cared nothing about him, I understood the precariousness of his institution. And it wasn’t – I rationalized – like the victim (or others I had tracked down with similar stories) was willing to talk on the record. When no one is clamoring for a story to come out, it’s easy to rationalize not doing it.

But by making that choice, I helped perpetuate a system that ensured there surely were more victims. Saying nothing has long-lasting, corrosive consequences not only for victims but for institutional culture. All of which is to say that Anne and Peggy, two of the best arts journalists working today, did a very brave, very important service with this first step. It will be a shame if it stops with outing the predators and not holding the institutions themselves to account.

_________________________

Full disclosure: In 2014-15 I worked as a consultant for the organization in Miami that ran the Cleveland Orchestra residency in South Florida, and was paid through the Cleveland Orchestra Miami for that work.

Related

Comments

There is an important factual omission in your comment. CIM did not just pay the alleged victim in the 2007 incident to audition at other schools, it also paid her tuition for the school she chose. The Clevelandscene.com article puts it this way:

“At the end of the year, it would pay for her to audition and fly out to other music schools. It would also pay for her education at the school she chose.”

That’s a huge cost difference from simply paying for auditions, and illustrates the gravity of the incident. (Though the error is understandable given the phrasing in the Clevelandscene article.) I’ve been told she chose a very expensive school.

I hope your suggestion that the institutions be held equally responsible for harboring abusers will be followed. And I hope the journalistic failures will be acknowledged and remedied.

Part of the problem is obvious. Journalists cannot report if victims do not speak, and victims do not speak when society does not support them. That has only *partially* changed, and in fact, the change in classical music has not been that large. I can tell you as someone who has worked for the rights of women in music for almost 40 years (and at enormous cost to my career,) that the vast majority of victims are still remaining silent out of fear for their careers and other forms of retribution. There is much more work to be done before the vast majority of victims will talk.

Judging from the Washington Post article, nothing was reported unless there were at least three victims willing to go on record about an abuser. I thus suspect that there were many incidents reported to the Washington Post that it did not include because corroborating victims did not come forward or would not go on record. The result is that the article was probably lawyered in half, and that only a small fraction of the people who responded to Midgette’s social media calls for reports from victims were included.

I’ve also noticed that arts organizations usually don’t act unless there are multiple victims, and even then, only when there are big headlines that force their hand. The result is that women can experience egregious abuse, but can’t say anything unless there are at least two other victims willing to go on record. This means that a huge amount of abuse will continue to go unreported. We should suffer no illusions, Fear and abuse still rule.

Douglas McLennan

I’m the founder and editor of ArtsJournal, which was founded in September 1999 and aggregates arts and culture news from all over the internet. The site is also home to some 60 arts bloggers. I’m a … [Read More...]

About diacritical

Our culture is undergoing profound changes. Our expectations for what culture can (or should) do for us are changing. Relationships between those who make and distribute culture and those who consume it are changing. And our definitions of what artists are, how they work, and how we access them and their work are changing. So... [Read more]

Peter Nelson on Too Many Artists Or Not Enough Value?: “For purposes of this discussion how are we defining "artist"? Are the various creatives involved in the advertising industry, the…” Mar 17, 13:02